Macy's Closing Former Marshall Field's Headquarters

Slowly, but surely, the last vestiges of the Marshall Field's brand are withering away.

There's more to Macy's most recent move than that. It's also another step in the long digestion of the May Department Stores corporate structure. After three years, Macy's is phasing out some of the regional offices it absorbed as part of that merger.

Macy's Inc. is shedding the former Marshall Field's headquarters in Minneapolis and cutting about 2,550 jobs in a reorganization that unwinds the regional structure it inherited when it bought May Department Stores Co. three years ago. The New York retailer estimated the moves will save it about $100 million a year starting in 2009.

Seven regional headquarters will be consolidated into four, and Macy's said it will set up smaller regional offices in Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Seattle that are charged with tailoring Macy's stores to local tastes, an effort it dubbed "My Macy's."

The moves come as Macy's on Wednesday cut its fourth-quarter earnings forecast in the wake of a 7.1 percent sales decline in January, a bigger drop than the company had forecast. Macy's push to create a national department store brand has been stymied more than a year as consumers have been slow to warm to converted Macy's stores. Macy's, like other retailers, now faces a slowing economy.